Being a Non-Western Psychologist?
First Winner of the 2000 Harry and Pola Triandis Doctoral Thesis Award
Candan Ertubey Luton, United kingdom
The millennium celebrations
were about to start on 30th December, 1999 and we were in my sisterıs
house in Izmir, Turkey. I had been trying to familiarise myself with a
new computer system to send an e-mail to Ottawa, Canada to take part in
the Harry and Pola Triandis award. After I had done that my reward was
going to be a trip to Ephesus, an ancient Greek city which is just 45
km from my home city. So, after I had sent my Ph.D. abstract by e-mail
to Marta Young I left home with a clear conscience for an evening of cultural
adventure.
I first heard about the IACCP when I was working on the Childrenıs Value project for Cigdem Kagitcibasi in Istanbul in 1982-83. My role was collecting household data in various parts of the city but mainly in deprived areas where even finding an address was a challenge. I remember my surprise and fascination at the location of some of these houses. On one occasion I was in the oldest and particularly nicest part of the city (Uskudar); on another I was at the foot of the Bosporus Bridge with a fantastic view of the Bosporus. Some of these houses had obviously been made without any city planning permission. They are called ³gecekondu² which can be translated as ³constructed over a night². The hospitality of the families I visited was always very good. Overall, this was an extremely educating experience for me. Even though at the time I wasnıt too aware that I was taking part in cross-cultural research the experience of working in an unfamiliar subculture had a big effect on me. Apart from this particular experience, thoughts about the importance of cultural issues in psychology and particularly about the differences between Western and Nonwestern psychology were a continual part of my higher education. Soon I became aware that, for very practical reasons, applied psychologists who were responsible for the assessment and treatment of psychological problems were almost always dependent on information generated by their Western counterparts. We used to have heated arguments about how it was that some of the findings we knew from the psychological literature didnıt match up with observations and research in Turkey. Can Turkey be called a collectivist culture? How could we know the criteria against which to measure individualism or collectivism reliably in a Turkish context? What are the social and ecological determinants of one culture, region or country which create differences in life experiences and which affect us as psychological beings?
At a very personal level my question was whether I should do my MA in Psychometrics, even though my preference was for Social Psychology? I decided on the former.
I started finding answers to some of these questions that were bothering me when I started my Masterıs degree in psychometrics. It was a hard but also an enjoyable subject to study. Soon I found a good compromise between my interest in social psychology and the topic I was studying. I had done a dissertation on the adaptation of Rotterıs Locus of Control Scale for school children between 10 and 15 years old. Also, I was surrounded by academics who had adapted various psychological concepts and psychometric materials to the Turkish language and culture. Some of this was concerned with the characteristics of Turkish culture and the effect of this culture on peopleıs behaviour. In terms of the countryıs politics there had been lot of interesting changes.
Changes in Turkeyıs politics produced, at a certain level, changes in the education system. A number of Semitic (Muslim) schools (18%) had gained classic state school status. This increased these childrenıs opportunity to take the university entrance exam and so go to university rather than become a religious cleric (imam). This change was a good thing and it increased the number of people with a religious upbringing who could take part in economic and political life. It made me wonder whether religious beliefs were in any way related to other belief systems and social representations and to the development of locus of control?
I was highly motivated to continue my postgraduate studies in the UK. This encouraged me to take up the question of cross-cultural studies from a cross-national point of view and allowed me to make comparisons between two cultures, one predominantly Christian and the other Muslim. It was the beginning of a natural experimental study. Inevitably, the question of comparability in cross-national, cross-religion and cross-language comparisons came up. The task would not be easy, but in the end I decided to use all available psychometric approaches and theories to address the problem. This was a significant learning experience. I was particularly attracted by item response theory but I wasnıt able to find much in the literature on its use in a cross-cultural setting. The problem was not a shortcoming of the method but rather of limited interest by cross-cultural psychologists. I think that psychologists in general, and cross-cultural psychologists in particular, want a reliable and valid methodology to answer their research questions. With the growth in technology to carry out simulations and to support our sophisticated knowledge of statistics some of these problems are becoming increasingly solvable.
My thesis was concerned with Turkish and English adolescentsı perceived control of academic events and compared classical test theory and item response theory as psychometric tools to investigate differences. I believe that there are two points that made the research important. Firstly, Iıve being trying to come up with a solution to the comparability problem of cross-cultural psychology using existing psychometric tools, especially item response theory (IRT). Secondly, in doing this I have come up with a result which was not really expected and which needs some explanation. It is that Turkish pupils are more Internal than their British counterparts although they are more religious and authoritarian.
I celebrated my Millennium New Year in a place that many civilisations have made their home for over 2000 years. Although, it is significant for me, in truth this is as significant as anywhere else in the world to celebrate our accumulated knowledge of culture.